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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29205159">staring down eternity</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill'>WingedQuill</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Family Bonding, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, Internalized Homophobia, Johnny Befriends Women That Can And Will Kick His Ass: The Fic, Johnny is more worried about his bisexuality than he is about his immortality, Johnny's trying his best with Robby but it ain't great, Like a lot of those, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Parent-Child Relationship, Polyamory, Sexuality Crisis, Team Bonding, V-shaped polyamory, he only has enough braincells for one identity crisis at a time</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 13:07:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,783</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29205159</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny forgets he’s immortal, sometimes. It’s surprisingly easy. He’s not like the others. He’s not like Andy, who takes down ten human trafficking rings before lunch, or like Joe and Nicky, whose “sparring sessions” alternate between making out and fighting to the death.</p>
<p>No, he’s a washed-up karate instructor in the asscrack of California, trying to make enough money to keep his lights on. His biggest battle is with the loser whose ass he already kicked seven ways to Sunday back in fucking high school. The last time he died was falling off the billboard of said loser’s face, while he was spray painting a dick on it.</p>
<p>(Or: I watched Cobra Kai and The Old Guard within a week of each other, and this was the result.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amanda LaRusso/Daniel LaRusso, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>126</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Alright, I caved. Like three weeks after watching this show, I caved. </p>
<p>I promise, I am not abandoning all my Witcher fics (or the Witcher fandom), but this idea just wouldn't leave me alone! So I hope you enjoy the messy karate dad becoming the messy immortal karate dad.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Johnny wakes, as he has every day for the past five years, with salt in his mouth and a scream in his throat. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stumbles over to the fridge, his mind clouded with a horror that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to shake. The knowledge that there’s a woman out there, buried in the deep blue sea, drowning again and again and again. That his nightmares are someone else’s life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He grabs a Coors out of the fridge and pops the top off with a practiced motion, sending the lid shooting into the trash can. He holds it up to the ceiling in a mock toast.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Morning, Quynh,” he mumbles, wincing at the raspy feeling in his throat. Dried out from last night’s drink or phantom seawater, he doesn’t know. “Hope today’s the day you finally fucking die.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes a swig and hopes that she’s dreaming of cold beer on her tongue.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He forgets he’s immortal, sometimes. It’s surprisingly easy. He’s not like the others. He’s not like Andy, who takes down ten human trafficking rings before lunch, or like Joe and Nicky, whose “sparring sessions” alternate between making out and fighting to the death.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No, he’s a washed-up karate instructor in the asscrack of California, trying to make enough money to keep his lights on. His biggest battle is with the loser whose ass he already kicked seven ways to Sunday back in fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>high school</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The last time he died was falling off the billboard of said loser’s face, while he was spray painting a dick on it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>(He hopes Quynh got a kick out of that one. Joe couldn’t stop laughing when he told him. At least that’s what The Google said “lmao” means.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes, when he’s three drinks in and considering a fourth, when he lets himself get maudlin and distinctly not-badass, he wonders why the fuck he’s still here. Why is he hanging around California, when he could </span>
  <em>
    <span>truly </span>
  </em>
  <span>shed his loser skin? Take on some major assholes, bang some hot chicks, talk with people who actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>understand </span>
  </em>
  <span>more than once a week.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But then, he’ll get into another fight with Shannon, listening to her slurred, furious voice over the phone, and he’ll remember just how fucking close Robby is to living on the street. And that’s why. He can’t leave him. Even if Robby never wants to talk to him again, even if he wants to keep playing happy families with LaRusso, Johnny can’t bail. He can’t be in Iran, or France, or New fucking York, the day that Robby’s life comes crashing down around his ears.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can be a couch to crash on, if nothing else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I almost died when I was a teenager, you know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Andy’s eyes flick from the television to him. They’re wary. Assessing. Most of the time, when she’s sprawled out on Johnny’s ratty couch, she looks like a normal person. All pizza breath and long sighs and snorting laughs. But then there are moments like this. Moments that she gets quiet and still, like she’s turned into one of those ugly statues that the Romans were always carving of her. The ones without the arms and noses. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he remembers that he’s talking to a woman who’s seen empires rise and fall, might’ve even had a hand in a few of them. He’s talking to a woman who has a bunch of ugly-ass statues in her likeness, statues that don’t do her eyes justice, and the reason they exist is because she was worshipped as a goddess dozens of times over.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s talking to someone who knows how to wait. How to be still. How to look at someone and pick up on all the awful little pieces of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Told you I’ve done karate since I was a kid,” he explains, peeling back the label of his beer bottle. Andy never fidgets, but he isn’t old enough to have outgrown that habit yet (how many years will that take? A hundred? A thousand?). “I lost this tournament. My sensei wasn’t happy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And he tried to kill you for that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s steel in her words. He wonders how many dictators and warlords and CEOs have died with that voice in their ears.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah. Choked me out in the parking lot.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His hand rises against his will, toying at the collar of his shirt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Would’ve killed me, if my opponent’s sensei hadn’t kicked the shit out of him. I think about that, sometimes. It fucking sucked, obviously, but...I think about what would’ve happened if…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He trails off. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What would’ve happened if I’d found out earlier? What would’ve happened if I’d died in that parking lot, if I’d woken up on the asphalt at my murderer’s feet? What would’ve happened if I stopped aging at seventeen?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We would’ve protected you,” Andy says. She claps a hand on Johnny’s shoulder, steady and sure. “We’ll protect you now, and we would’ve protected you then. You know that, right?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He closes his eyes and pictures it. The younger, less broken version of himself, tagging along with a band of immortals. Leaving California behind, leaving Sid and Kreese and Cobra Kai behind. Stepping into the person that he’ll be for the rest of eternity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Never meeting Shannon. Never having Robby. Never meeting Diaz, or Robinson, or Hawk. Any of the kids that need him now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Was it worth it? To live thirty more years, to spend the rest of forever with wrinkles and a sore back? To have spent his twenties, thirties, forties, directionless and confused and </span>
  <em>
    <span>lost?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t know. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Andy takes his silence as an answer she doesn’t like. She sighs, gets to her feet. The couch creaks in protest at the shifting of her weight. Fuck, he really should buy a new one. That couldn’t have been fun for her to sleep on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s enough lounging around,” she says, offering him her hand. He takes it, and she hauls him to his feet. “Come on. I made a lesson plan and everything.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Right. She didn’t come all this way to have a little heart-to-heart. She’s here to train him. Show him how to not fuck them all over, while he’s living out the rest of his pretend-life here in Reseda.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Taking a page out of my book?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She snorts, tugging him through his tiny apartment and towards the bathroom.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is this some kind of ploy to get me to shower with you? Because I’ve already told you, I have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>rule </span>
  </em>
  <span>about age gaps--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not on your life.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You should swear on something a bit sturdier than that. I literally died last week.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She laughs, pulling a knife from the holster around her waist.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not on your dojo then, better?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He smiles. It’s good to think of that as a permanent thing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Better.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good. Now,” she says, pressing the knife into his hand. “You’re going to kill me. Make it bloody. And then I’m gonna show you how to get away with murder.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sits on the beach and watches the waves. Watches the sunset dance off of them, watches the seagulls arc overhead. He’d always loved the ocean. It felt endless. Boundless. The very definition of possibility.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> He used to come out here when the world got to be too much, when Sid’s yelling and Mom’s excuses slipped into his skull and made him think about doing awful things to himself. He used to stare out at the sea and picture himself on the other side of it. Or out on a boat, a thousand miles from shore, a thousand miles from his own head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was freedom in it, then.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now he knows it’s a prison.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He hasn’t been surfing since he started dreaming about Quynh. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can’t spend a moment with another person--a </span>
  <em>
    <span>mortal, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and isn’t that an odd distinction to make?--without feeling like he’s lying to them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a familiar discomfort. Like the cloud of confusion when everyone else is in on a joke he doesn’t quite get. Like skin pulling back together after a fight. Lying by omission, his oldest and best vice. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t know what he’d be without an unspoken truth knocking against the back of his teeth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>An arm slung across his back, a body pressed into his. Bobby laughing and laughing, his bright teeth flashing in the sun.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>A warmth in his stomach, this giddy little happiness bubbling into his throat, quickly followed by nausea, horror, and there’s something </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>wrong </em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span>with him--</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Yeah. He has practice keeping secrets.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sometimes wonders if letting go of one secret would make keeping the bigger, more important one easier. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>could </span>
  </em>
  <span>tell someone about the whole...God, he doesn’t even like to think it, the whole “dudes are pretty hot, I guess” thing. He doesn’t think any of his cobras would mind. Hell, Robinson had come into practice the other week wearing a t-shirt with a silhouette of a snake on it, filled in with rainbow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Gay cobra!” Diaz had gasped, and it had taken him about five minutes to get them to stop ooh-ing and ah-ing over the shirt, and another ten minutes to convince them that </span>
  <em>
    <span>no, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he was not putting in a custom order for twelve of them, his students could spend their own damn money.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So. He thinks that Diaz would probably be...pretty excited, honestly, if he told him. Would probably try and find him a boyfriend or something. The kid’s a meddler.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Or he could tell Joe and Nicky. They’d been gay in the fucking tenth century. Eleventh century? Whatever, a long-ass time ago. A time that they could’ve been tortured, murdered. Sent to the bottom of the sea, if his suspicions about Quynh and Andy are correct.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>(And God, that thought makes something </span>
  <em>
    <span>fester </span>
  </em>
  <span>inside of him, hot and angry. </span>
  <em>
    <span>They took one of us, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and he doesn’t mean immortals.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Compared to them? He has it easy. He’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>it easy, his whole life. Even with Sid’s loud proclamations of just what he’d do with a gay son, even with the news blaring constantly that people like him were dying, that God had turned his wrath on them. No one was gonna burn him at the stake for liking guys, even in the eighties. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So why is he being such a </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking coward </span>
  </em>
  <span>about it?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He bounces on the mat, relishing in the familiar feel of plastic-covered foam. It’s dark in the dojo, shades drawn over the windows to keep any midnight-snack-goers at the mini-mart from seeing two immortals whaling on each other. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Andy smoothes her hair back and rolls her shoulders, looking at him expectantly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Spar, maim, or kill?” she asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Restlessness has squirmed its way into his muscles, these past few weeks. Ever since LaRusso raised his fucking rent, kicked his legs out from under him without striking a single blow. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>needs </span>
  </em>
  <span>a real fight, needs to settle the tension in his chest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kill,” he says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Andy grins, and strikes first.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a phantom ache at the base of his neck where Andy snapped his spine three times in a row. He really needs to get better at getting out of headlocks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He digs his toes into the cool sand and lies back, pillowing his head on his arms. Andy’s already driving back to the airport, catching the first flight to Korea. Something about a serial killer that no one’s been able to catch. She asked him if he wanted to come, of course. She always does. And there’s always that little flash of disappointment in her eyes at his answer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s just him and the stars, the ocean a quiet roar in the dark. It doesn’t sound like this at the bottom of the sea. He hopes it’s okay.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know if you’re listening,” he says. “Hope you are. Always hope you are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wiggles his toes in the sand. Tilts his face into the wind. Rubs a lock of his hair between his fingers. Little bits of stimuli, not for his own sake.</span>
</p>
<p><span>“She misses you, I think,” he says. “She gets...quiet. Sad. I mean, fuck, it could be anything, I dunno how much</span> <span>sadness you can pack into six thousand years but. When she told me about you. How she lost you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so…”</span></p>
<p>
  <span>He swallows.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know. I can’t...I’m not good with words, you know this by now. But she’s really fuckin’ miserable, and not as good at hiding it as she thinks she is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He shakes his head back and forth, letting the sand scratch against his scalp.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She loves you, still. And you love her, I think.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stops moving. Lies there for a long moment, tracing the patterns of the constellations with his eyes. He never learned most of their names. Maybe he should. Trace them out for Quynh, tell her the stories behind them. Would she like that? He doesn’t really know anything about her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m gay,” he blurts out, and the words burn like vomit in his throat. “Or...bi, I guess. To be specific. Something like that. I...fuck, you probably don’t even know what those words mean. I like men.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His face feels hot under the chilly ocean breeze, and he can hardly breathe from embarrassment. Or fear. He’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>scared, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he realizes. Scared at confessing his...his </span>
  <em>
    <span>gayness </span>
  </em>
  <span>to a woman buried at the bottom of the sea.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the stupidest fucking thing in the world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I like men. Is it bad, that I’m more scared of that than I am at being immortal?” he asks Quynh. The air. No one.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Only the ocean replies.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Coming up: Johnny has no idea what his own emotions mean, The Old Guard receives a series of increasingly troubling texts, and Quynh never does get to go stargazing through Johnny's eyes</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Quick warning before we begin: This chapter contains references to past suicidal thoughts, as well as current suicidal thoughts (of an immortal character, so more like self-harm). This is going to be a semi-recurring theme throughout this story, and I will warn for it whenever it comes up.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>His students are running away from a pack of wild dogs, screaming their dumb little heads off, when Johnny remembers that they can’t just heal from rabies.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck. Not again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighs, twisting his fingers in his hair and trying to not let his students see how nervous he is. It’s shockingly difficult remembering what is and is not possible for normal people to recover from. He doesn’t know how Andy has made it this far without like, accidentally shoving a mortal off a cliff because they were getting on her nerves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hm. He’s gonna have to watch himself around LaRusso, isn’t he?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He makes a mental note to never go mountain climbing with the asshole, and kicks a mastiff away from Bert. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hustle!” he yells, banging on the hood of a nearby car. He winces as the rust digs into his hand. Fuck, are kids required to get tetanus shots in California?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bert takes off like a shot, his small arms windmilling in the air, his skinny legs eating up the ground. Kid might not be able to fight, but he can run like hell. Small kids are always like that. But he won’t be a small kid forever—he’ll be old and gray before Johnny gets a day older, and isn’t that fucking weird to think about?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hawk yells out a battlecry and kicks a rottweiler in the snout.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This might have been a mistake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever, it’ll be fine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey Andy,” Johnny says, leaning against his kitchen counter, his phone pressed against his cheek. “Do you ever forget what kills normal people?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A pause. He takes a swig of beer and burps into the phone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lovely,” Andy says, and he can </span>
  <em>
    <span>hear </span>
  </em>
  <span>her eyes rolling, like she doesn’t do the exact same thing. “I can’t say I do, no. Trying to remember if I did, back when I was a baby.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not a baby.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re fifty.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You realize this proves my point, not yours, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A laugh. Another pause. He lets her have it this time, uses the opportunity to flop down on his new couch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve seen a lot of death, Johnny,” she says at last. Her voice is wary. Guard up, ready to block. “Lotta people doing a lotta fucked up things to other people. It’s...important to know what’s fatal and what’s not. When to take someone to a hospital, when they can survive without it. When there’s no point.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He lies back, resting his head on a decidedly uncomfortable throw pillow that Miguel had bought him. A “couchwarming gift,” he’d called it. There’s a crack on the ceiling. Same crack that’s been there since before he moved in. Same crack that was there when he lay on the floor, more wasted than he’d ever been, and followed it up and up and—</span>
</p><p>
  <span> He squirms around on the couch, flopping onto his side and staring at the blank surface of his TV instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So how do I learn it, then?” he asks. “Before I come on your missions, see whatever fucked up shit you’ve seen. How do I—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why do you need to know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I teach kids how to fight, Andy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...oh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, <em>oh</em>. Don’t wanna push one of them too hard, and—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can’t finish the sentence. It sticks in his throat, curls around his vocal cords like a chokehold. Miguel tied up in the swimming pool, Bert and Hawk against the dogs, Aisha picking her way over jagged metal. Fuck, he could’ve hurt any of them, he could’ve </span>
  <em>
    <span>killed </span>
  </em>
  <span>any of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pictures that. Leans into the self-loathing of it. Miguel, cold and wet on the tile floor, his lips blue, his eyes glassy. Dead because his moron of a sensei forgot that, for most people, the scariest part of drowning isn’t coming back to life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You haven’t been like this for very long.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He drags himself away from that awful image and focuses on Andy’s voice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So…” she sighs, and he hears a soft </span>
  <em>
    <span>thud </span>
  </em>
  <span>over the phone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you just kick a wall?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe. Look...do you remember being scared of death?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kreese’s fingers around his throat. A knife trembling over his wrists. The crack on the ceiling spinning faster and faster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” His voice comes out way quieter than he wanted it to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay. So when you’re coming up with a lesson plan, I want you to remember that person. I want you to remember how you felt, and if the thought of doing whatever the hell you plan on making the kids do would scare that man...just don’t do it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You make it sound so easy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was an adrenaline junkie, even when he thought he was mortal. The thought of running over a shipping container of rusty metal sounds kinda fun, even to his past self. But…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he can picture Kreese ordering him to do it. Can picture his sneer, his glinting eyes, the surety that he won’t take no for an answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>scares him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe it is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He puts down the phone feeling heavier and lighter all at once. A familiar feeling, where Andy is concerned. She doesn’t put up with his shit, and he can’t tell himself that she just doesn’t get him, because...well, she does, doesn’t she?</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You should call Robby more often. You don’t have long with him, not in the grand scheme of things.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>An unasked-for bit of advice, right before she hung up the call. Good advice. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows </span>
  </em>
  <span>that, but he doesn’t want to think about the fact that Robby is just as mortal as his students. That way just leads to another death on the living room floor, booze in his blood and an ache in his chest. Just like the first dozen or so nights after Andy told him what he was, after the implications of </span>
  <em>
    <span>forever </span>
  </em>
  <span>sunk in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He needs a drink. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>shouldn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>drink, not tonight. Not with the All-Valley coming up, not with the panic of dogs-pool-chokehold-metal swimming through his head, not with the image of Robby, fifty, sixty years older flashing in front of his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He should go. Somewhere that isn’t here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snatches a flashlight and a brand new copy of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Astronomy for Dummies </span>
  </em>
  <span>off the kitchen counter and shrugs on a thin sweatshirt. The beach. He can head to the beach, listen to the waves. Try and puzzle out some of the pictures in the sky.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey Quynh,” he says. “So I bought this constellation book thing, and it might be boring as shit to </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but it can’t be more boring than—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He opens the door and his words die on his tongue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Carmen Diaz is standing in front of the door, her fist raised to knock. She jumps backwards, startled, her eyebrows shooting up her forehead. Johnny holds up his hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Didn’t mean to scare ya,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs, grabbing her heart theatrically. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Didn’t mean to be scared.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her eyes dart to the book and flashlight in his hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I came over to invite you to dinner, but it looks like you have plans…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hmm. Talking to someone new would probably be more entertaining than watching him squint at the star charts in this book, right? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No plans,” he says. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Another time, Quynh. You can watch me make a fool of myself in Spanish, instead. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“Just a hobby.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh. You don't strike me as the kind of man who’d enjoy stargazing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She reaches behind him to close his door, and a shiver runs through him at her closeness. She places a hand lightly on his back, steering him towards her apartment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cold?” she asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” he lies, leaning into her warmth. “Freezing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Carmen Diaz is...</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Well. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Where to even begin?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s hot. Quick-witted. Sweet on Miguel, a good cook, and she has the prettiest fucking voice Johnny’s ever heard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But her ex was also a major douchebag, and from the sounds of it, she’s still getting over </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>heartbreak. And Johnny can’t fucking die. Which means he’ll need to disappear instead. He has...what, a decade left? A decade left, max, before his lack of new wrinkles gets suspicious. There’s no relationship here that doesn’t end in heartbreak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighs, slamming his head into his little kitchen table in frustration. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It’s always gonna be this hard, isn’t it? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck it,” he mutters into the wood, because he’s getting maudlin, and getting maudlin means drinking himself to death. “Come on Quynh, time for some star—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Glass shatters out in the parking lot, followed by an excited </span>
  <em>
    <span>whoop. </span>
  </em>
  <span>And then the bang of metal on metal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“—gazing,” he finishes lamely. “Hold that thought.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So. Daniel LaRusso torched his fucking car. Or hired some dudes to torch his fucking car, same difference</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No killing him, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Johnny tells himself, staring at the burned-out shell of his baby. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Andy said she’ll leave you in prison for five years if you get a life sentence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Still. His blood is hot, singing for a fight. Perfect LaRusso and his perfect fucking life, trying to rip away the things Johnny is clinging to with bloody fingernails. His car, his dojo, his car </span>
  <em>
    <span>again</span>
  </em>
  <span>. What’s he gonna do next, burn down Johnny’s apartment? Kidnap Robby? All because Johnny </span>
  <em>
    <span>died </span>
  </em>
  <span>drawing a dick on his face?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that he knows that little detail. But. Still. Talk about asymmetric warfare.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He runs his hands down his face and stalks over to the motorcycles that LaRusso’s friends had left behind. Admittedly they’re pretty badass, black and covered with orange and yellow flames. If he didn’t need to carry shit back and forth from the dojo, he might just keep one and call it even.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>need to carry shit back and forth from the dojo. And he also wants to punch LaRusso right in his perfect teeth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He straddles the motorcycle and revs the engine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t expecting it to go like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>LaRusso’s house is every bit as perfectly-upper-middle-class as he was dreading. Three stories, a pool, a massive kitchen that smells like the exact kind of fancy dark roast that Sid always liked to drink. It makes the hairs on the back of Johnny’s neck stand up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he was also expecting them to immediately square up, ready to fight right there in LaRusso’s ugly as hell backyard. That’s what he came here for, after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The weird thing, the oddity that really isn’t that odd when he stops to think about it for more than a minute, is LaRusso’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>wife.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Within five seconds, she’s stripped down their actions to their bare, ridiculous essentials, dragged them out of their fighting stances with nothing but a few pointed comments, and corralled them into the awful smelling kitchen. She sits down at the head of the table, props her chin on her hand, and studies them. There’s no other word for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She reminds him of Andy, a bit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew he was walking into the lion’s den, coming here. But he thinks he was worried about the wrong lion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She rolls over both of them like a smooth wave, voice clear and sure. Point A, point B. Problem, solution. His cousin destroyed your car, we’ll give you a new one. Easy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Andy’s like that too, but he thinks that’s because she’s lived long enough to have a damn good eye for patterns. The world rarely shocks her, these days. Johnny wishes that he had the same, sure grasp of cause and effect. The same knowledge that everything makes sense, that everything falls the way it’s meant to. Maybe he will, someday.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then, maybe it’s something that you’re born with. Maybe that’s Amanda’s superpower or something. Hell, immortality's a thing, why not throw in a bit of fortune-telling and/or reality manipulation?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He jams a forkful of eggs into his mouth. And shit, maybe LaRusso’s superpower is cooking, because these are the best fucking scrambled eggs he’s ever eaten. Not that he’s going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>tell </span>
  </em>
  <span>him that. Obviously.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>R breakfast superpowers a thing?</span>
  </em>
  <span> he texts Andy under the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His phone buzzes two seconds later.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>??</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He’ll take that as a no.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright, Johnny,” LaRusso scowls, slipping back into the kitchen with his wife smirking by his side. “You win. We’ll head to the dealership after breakfast.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Thank </span>
  </em>
  <span>you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Coffee?” Amanda asks, cutting off whatever LaRusso was about to say in response.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wrinkles his nose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll pass.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Bobby told him back in high school that one day he’d be driving around with Daniel LaRusso, jamming out to Speedwagon, he probably would have punched him in the face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, that’s not fair to Bobby. He’d have tried to punch him in the face, at least. And then gotten laid flat on his ass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But here they are, windows down, humming under their breaths, the air warm and windy around them. There aren’t many moments where Johnny </span>
  <em>
    <span>enjoys </span>
  </em>
  <span>the world, where he breathes it all in and thinks </span>
  <em>
    <span>ah yes, I’m glad I’ll be on this planet for at least a few millenia. Nice job, Earth.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But this is one of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>LaRusso is a hell of a lot nicer when he’s drunk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s—</span>
  <em>
    <span>giggly. </span>
  </em>
  <span>For one. All bright eyes and tired grins and wildly accentuating hands. And he’s full of stories, an open goddamn book about everything from his dad to his sensei to his and Ally’s breakup. It makes something fizz up inside of Johnny, like the champagne he used to drink when he was a country club asshole with no taste in alcohol. The fact that LaRusso is letting him </span>
  <em>
    <span>know </span>
  </em>
  <span>him. </span>
  <span>It's triumph, maybe. He’s making LaRusso see things his way. Making him have a bit of sympathy. Fuck, maybe LaRusso will leave him the fuck </span>
  <em>
    <span>alone </span>
  </em>
  <span>after this.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Or it could be...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Nope, no way. Triumph. Victory. That’s all that fizzy feeling is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But better double check. He waits for LaRusso to head for a leak before he pulls out his phone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hey. How many times did u kill Nicky before u got the hotz for him?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Like, twice? </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Thought u said wuz over 12 ??</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The other ten were foreplay</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Interesting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He puts his phone back in his pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two fights to the death to turn a mortal rivalry into a love story. Nothing in there about Speedwagon and martinis. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Triumph it is. He doesn’t have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing </span>
  </em>
  <span>for Daniel LaRusso.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thank God.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Come say hi to me on <a href="https://geraltstiddyarmor.tumblr.com">tumblr</a>. </p><p>Also I just realized I could have called this fic "Cobra Kai Never Dies" and it would've been perfect. Fuck.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Coming up: Johnny stays up for three days, gets into a heated debate over which decade had the best music (the 80s, duh), and drinks shitty gas station coffee. Business as usual, really.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Again, this chapter will contain a bit of suicidal ideation by an immortal character. If you want to avoid this, just skip the first section (up until the asterisks). </p><p>Also warnings for canon-typical alcohol, weed, and Johnny being Johnny</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Hey, universe? Remember how I wondered if LaRusso would kidnap Robby to get back at me? I was fucking joking.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The valley stretches out beneath him, all twinkling lights and warm summer air, and Johnny sits on the hood of his new car—which </span>
  <em>
    <span>still </span>
  </em>
  <span>has the dealership’s plates on it, shit, fuck, he’s gonna have to go crawling back to LaRusso to do the fucking paperwork—and tries to talk himself out of leaping off a cliff.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You’ll have to climb all the way back up here, and knowing your luck, LaRusso will somehow figure out where you are and have your car towed. It’s really not worth it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighs and flops back down against the warm metal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So Quynh,” he mutters. “That could’ve gone better, huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He drums his fingers against the car, a sigh bursting from his throat. It feels good, so he does it again. Again. Breathe in, let it all out at once. Breathe in, let it all out at once. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t even have the fucking astronomy book,” he mutters, his eyes flicking over the stars. “Fucked up even that, didn’t I?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He raises his arm and traces the path of the one constellation that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>know, the neat little dots of the Big Dipper. It’s part of a bear—Robby told him that once, back in elementary school, before he learned to be wary of his father’s attention, before he learned that it was temporary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before Johnny learned that </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>was temporary, his angry little boy with an eye for the stars and the meanest kick Johnny ever saw on a soccer field. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t remember where the bear’s legs are. He’d still been hungover when Robby explained it all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stars blur above him and shit, he hadn’t drunk </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>much, not </span>
  <em>
    <span>again—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s warmth on his face. Oh. He’s crying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry Quynh,” he says, wiping at his eyes, because she’s trapped at the bottom of the ocean, and he’s crying over a son that’s still here, still alive and whole. “Sorry. Give me a sec, and we can—we can keep looking at the stars.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been a </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice day, </span>
  </em>
  <span>that was the shittiest thing. He’d laughed more than he had in a long time, that was for damn sure. Like, he thought he and LaRusso might have been hurtling towards friendship. Even that feeling of victory in his stomach hadn’t felt like it had in high school, all rotten through and driving him towards the next battle. He’d just felt—content? Something like: </span>
  <em>
    <span>it’s over. It’s over and he’s won. He can rest now.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>LaRusso brought him back to his house, loose limbed and grinning, ready for a friendly spar. Another potential victory, offered out to Johnny like an olive branch, a first-place trophy. And then Robby was there, jumping in front of Daniel, defending </span>
  <em>
    <span>him </span>
  </em>
  <span>from </span>
  <em>
    <span>Johnny, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and the warm contentment was gone, snuffed out like a candle. Lost as easy as everything else Johnny had ever had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johnny switches from Coors to 5-hour energy as the sun breaks over the horizon. He doesn’t want to sleep, not until after the tournament. Two days. He just needs to get through today and tomorrow without the water and the iron and the breathless crush of drowning. He’s just too—and he’d sooner die in a fire than tell anyone this, and Andy says that </span>
  <em>
    <span>really fucking hurts</span>
  </em>
  <span>—he’s too fragile right now. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ugh</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He knows he’s supposed to be...what did Diaz say? “Working on his toxic masculinity.” But Jesus, he sounds like a chick halfway through the third trimester, even in his own head. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fragile. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quit being a whiny bitch,” he mutters under his breath. He chucks the empty bottle of energy to the floor of the passenger’s seat and puts the car in reverse. He told Diaz, Hawk, and Robinson—his heavy-hitters, his champions—to meet him at the dojo at seven AM, and he’s not about to be late. Not when he’s planning on making any stragglers do push-ups till their arms give out.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Would that scare mortal-you?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Hm. He’s pretty sure no one ever died from sore arms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can’t stop thinking about LaRusso’s stupid lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Probably his subconscious reminding him to practice uppercuts. Robinson is a bit sloppy on her follow-through, always pulling back like she doesn’t want to break any jaws.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look, you won’t get disqualified for knocking out a tooth,” he tells her. “The refs understand these things happen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She blinks up at him, in that shocked-but-excited way that all his kids do when he tells them they can do something that they’ve secretly always wanted to do. And LaRusso said that he doesn’t get how they </span>
  <em>
    <span>enjoy </span>
  </em>
  <span>his teaching methods, that’ll show—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wait a second. Teeth don’t grow back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not that we want that to happen,” he adds quickly. Look at him, being a responsible, </span>
  <em>
    <span>mortal </span>
  </em>
  <span>sensei. Andy would be proud. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But it might,” Hawk pipes up from where he’s kick-switch-kicking a heavy bag. “And if it does, you’ll definitely be more badass than if you wuss out on your uppercut and let your enemy dodge.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t remember making you my co-sensei,” Johnny shoots back. “Keep kicking. And keep those switches </span>
  <em>
    <span>fast. </span>
  </em>
  <span>You don’t want your enemy anticipating.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, sensei.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turns back to Robinson, who’s holding her hands in front of her face, looking at him a bit nervously. Like she doesn’t know what she should do, if she should be careful or fierce. Johnny’s not sure if she’s ever known.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fuck it. Fake teeth are pretty good these days, right?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s right,” he says, holding the punch mitt face down, chin height. “Give it your all. Rule two, come on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She grins at him, quick and bright, and throws all her weight behind the punch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Carmen takes one look at him, deduces that he still doesn’t have anything in his fridge but beer and hot pockets, and hauls him into her apartment for the second time in three days. He follows her gladly. The lack of sleep is starting to creep into his head, filling it with cloying gray static, and he thinks he might just pass out on the couch if he lets himself be alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, dinner with the Diazes it is. And then he’ll drive up into the hills and run until his lungs give out. Or head back to the dojo and kick a heavy bag until his shins are bruised, he hasn’t decided yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sitting down at Carmen’s table feels like stepping into a patch of sunlight after a long hike through the woods. Like slipping on headphones to block out a fight. Like coming back to life. It’s a respite. It’s his lungs finally filling with air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The food is warm, spicy, and he chews it for longer than he needs to, letting the warmth spread from his tongue to his fingertips. Rosa eyes up his Metallica t-shirt, before turning to Diaz and asking him something, waving her fork in time with her words. And yeah, Johnny’s lived in California his whole life, and he </span>
  <em>
    <span>did </span>
  </em>
  <span>take two semesters in beginner’s Spanish at the community college back in ‘03, but there’s no way he could hope to keep up with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yaya,” Diaz groans, sinking down into his seat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Johnny asks, not sure if he should be amused or offended.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She asked if you’re the one who introduced me to ‘80s rock,” he says delicately, stabbing a piece of chicken. Carmen snorts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She actually asked if you introduced him to the ‘garbage he blasts every morning at seven AM,’” she corrects. “I’d like to know that too, actually.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, Metallica is </span>
  <em>
    <span>badass,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Johnny says, sitting up straight. “80s rock was the </span>
  <em>
    <span>pinnacle </span>
  </em>
  <span>of music.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno,” Carmen says, swirling her finger over the lip of her wine glass. “I’m more of a 90s girl, myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll give you Nirvana,” Johnny says magnanimously. “Even though they </span>
  <em>
    <span>were </span>
  </em>
  <span>formed in the late 80s, but I’ll give you them—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The 90s had so much more than—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Guns N’ Roses!” Johnny says, throwing out his arms. Diaz stifles a laugh. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Radiohead,” Carmen counters. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He narrows his eyes. Oh it is </span>
  <em>
    <span>on.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the end, neither of them are able to convince Carmen’s mother that their decade has “the best music of all time, period,” even though they continue the argument long after Diaz has gone to sleep. She waves them both off with a resounding declaration that nothing could beat the sixties, and that’s that. And then she drags them both outside to smoke with her to prove it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johnny will forever be crushed that he can’t play his biggest trump card, which is that Andy, who has been around since “music” probably meant something like “smashing rocks together and screaming,” agrees with him that the 1980s produced the best music ever heard on planet Earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Take that, Deadhead, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he thinks, passing Rosa her joint back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So like. He hasn’t known Carmen for all that long. And he likes the safety of this place, the warmth and lightness of it, but if he loses it...it won’t be the same as losing Bobby. Or Andy, for that matter, because yeah, he has his </span>
  <em>
    <span>suspicions </span>
  </em>
  <span>about her, but he isn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Anyway. It’s lower-stakes, is the point. Not quite as low-stakes as telling Quynh, who literally can’t do fucking anything with the information but still not...bad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe it’s just the weed making him think this is a good idea. Either way, he turns to her, takes her hand, and says, very seriously: “Green Day sucks.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She blinks at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you okay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. Green Day sucks. But Billie Joe Armstrong is a major babe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stares at him for a moment longer, until he’s about to yank his hand back and tell her he’s joking. And then her concerned smile cracks into a laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that,” she snorts. “Is that your way of coming out to me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pitches forward with the force of her giggles, throwing up a hand to steady herself on Johnny’s shoulder. The spot beneath her fingers feels like a bit of the sun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s touching him. She learned this...this </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing </span>
  </em>
  <span>about him, and she’s still touching him like a person. He exhales, short and sharp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe,” he says. And then, “yeah. Yeah, it is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She leans back, face still twitching with laughter, even as she tries to force it down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” she says. She squeezes his shoulder. “Alright, then. Billie Joe Armstrong’s a major babe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t feel like a new person. Like, he’s not about to start wearing rainbows and parading down the street while drinking moscato out of a dick-shaped bendy straw. But he feels a bit lighter. The world feels a little easier to exist in, the centuries stretching ahead a little less daunting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes a swig of his coffee, wincing as a dozen grits get stuck in his teeth. Fuck, the 7-Eleven needs to fill their damn carafes more often. He scrapes the bottom of the barrel enough as it is, no need to make that literal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He chucks the duffle bag of gis in the trunk and throws himself into the driver’s seat. Glance in the rearview mirror, make sure his hair is appropriately rumpled. Sexy kind of messy not “hasn’t slept in three days” kind of messy. The distinction is small but important. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright Quynh,” he says, curling his hands around the wheel. He squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them as wide as they can go. Gotta wake himself up enough that he doesn’t drive off a cliff. He doesn’t know how he’d explain </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>one to LaRusso. “Wanna go watch a bunch of kids whale on each other for fun?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tournament is…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. It could have gone better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They won. They won, but—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robby clutching his shoulder, writhing on the mat. LaRusso scrabbling at his knee, choking back sobs. Two boys shown no mercy, thirty years apart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the first time, he questions his teaching methods beyond just </span>
  <em>
    <span>will this kill anyone?  </span>
  </em>
  <span>For the first time, he wonders what he might be doing to his kids’ minds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>[3 hours ago] To Robby: R u OK?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>[3 hours ago] To Robby: U should go 2 a dr. Will pay for it, just tell me where</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>[3 hours ago] To Robby: Gonna make diaz do pushups till he pukes</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>[2 hours ago] To Robby: srsly, u OK?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>[1 hour ago] To Robby: Shouldn’t have happened like that</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>[30 mins ago] To Robby: I’m sorry</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The screen flickers and goes black. Out of battery.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Holds in a scream.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robby’s shoulder could be fucked up for </span>
  <em>
    <span>life </span>
  </em>
  <span>and he didn’t—he couldn’t convince Diaz to avoid it, he couldn’t—</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sweep the knee.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck. </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>Fuck.</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>He needs a fucking drink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He goes to his dojo instead of his apartment. Some weird form of penance. Or meditation, maybe. Or meditation-that-is-penance. Sitting on the ground and breathing for hours </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>seem like self-flagellation more than anything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe he should go to LaRusso’s place and goad him into teaching him his dumb breathing exercises. Hmm...nope. LaRusso won’t have any good beer. And he’s probably driving Robby to the hospital right now. Shit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beer. He needs. </span>
  <em>
    <span>So </span>
  </em>
  <span>much beer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He slams open his car door and stumbles out onto the strip mall parking lot. He’s so tired that he already feels halfway drunk. Good. Means it won’t take as much booze to get him the rest of the way there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turns to face the dojo and…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door’s already open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He puts his keys between his knuckles, a little flash of insight from the women’s self-defense class that rents out his dojo on Fridays. Not that he couldn’t kick a burglar’s ass with his bare hands, but he’s been wanting to try out this technique, and Andy isn’t coming back to California for at least another few months, so unsuspecting thief it is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bell rings as he opens the door and he cringes. He should really take that down when he’s not here, or wrap the little dangly bit in tape or something. It’s a dead giveaway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The creak of a chair. Footsteps. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A woman slips out of his office.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a heartbeat, he doesn’t recognize her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s tall, and far too skinny, all bird bones pressed against skin, pointy elbows and knobby knees. Her long black hair swings as she walks, framing her thin face, her narrow shoulders. She moves slowly, clumsily, like she’s forgotten how.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like she hasn’t walked in a long, </span>
  <em>
    <span>long </span>
  </em>
  <span>time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he doesn’t know her. Not really. He doesn’t recognize her hair, or her body, or the way that she walks. But her eyes. Deep brown. Fathomless as the sea. Glinting with grief, with desperation, with </span>
  <em>
    <span>anger. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Those, he knows very well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The keys fall from his fingers. He steps forward, and his throat is so very dry, and he can taste salt on his lips. He never thought—he’d </span>
  <em>
    <span>hoped, </span>
  </em>
  <span>with the same aching want that he’d hoped for mortality, normalcy, his childhood back, he’d hoped for this moment like he’d hoped for all impossible things—but he never thought it could come true, and now—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quynh?”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>yeah, I know karate probably doesn't have uppercuts, but i'm also pretty sure that half the moves they use in the tournament are illegal so who cares? Not the showrunners and not me, that's for sure</p><p>come say hi to me on <a href="https://geraltstiddyarmor.tumblr.com">tumblr!</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Coming up: Quynh and Johnny hug it out, eat some takeout, and plan a death match.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning for this chapter: This depicts the aftermath of starvation, including (not medically advisable) re-feeding.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Quynh stares at him for a long moment, her dark eyes flicking over him. He’s reminded of another useless bit of trivia Robby taught him, the story of that one god who measures your heart against a feather. She’s doing that with her eyes, he thinks. Staring down into all the cruel and bitter parts of him, peeling back every layer of grime. He shifts from foot to foot, unable to stand still under her intensity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought you would know,” she murmurs. Her voice is soft, but not gentle. He can’t explain the difference, but he knows, somewhere deep in his prey-animal hindbrain, that this woman could destroy him without raising her voice above a whisper. “That you’d see. But you’re surprised that I’m here, aren’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven’t dreamed in—haven’t slept in three days,” he croaks. His hands twitch at his sides. He wants nothing more than to rush forward and touch her, take her face in his hands, wrap his arms around her shoulders. He wants to feel her against him, solid and warm and </span>
  <em>
    <span>here. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Free. Alive, really, truly </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But she might snap his neck. Might bolt as soon as he moves. There’s something fragile about her, buried beneath all that cold, simmering anger, and he doesn’t want to be the one to shatter it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She takes a step closer, peering at his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You look it,” she says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You look worse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. They were instinctual, reflexive. Take an insult, give one back, a rhythm as natural to him as trading blows. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” he says, holding up his hands. “I didn’t mean—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something melts in her face. A small quirk of her lips. A softening of the anger in her eyes. She brings one thin hand up to muffle a laugh. Johnny bites his tongue so he doesn’t tell her to take her hand away, because </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she hasn’t laughed in </span>
  <em>
    <span>centuries, </span>
  </em>
  <span>probably, and it should be loud. She deserves to be loud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You did mean it,” she laughs through that tiny smile. “And it’s okay. You’re right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She staggers forward, clumsy as Johnny gets when he’s four beers in. He holds himself still, reigning in the urge to reach out and steady her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then she trips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t even think about it, lunging forward and catching her under the armpits, like she’s one of his kids about to take a bad fall. She jolts like he’s just shocked her, and he lifts her to her feet, an apology on the tip of his tongue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she commands, when he starts to pull back. “Don’t go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She melts against him, wrapping her arms around his waist, burying her face into his chest. He stands frozen for a moment, too startled to move, his hands still awkwardly gripping her sides. What does he do? What does he </span>
  <em>
    <span>say?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She shudders against him, burrowing into his warmth like a flower reaching for the sun. A sob is muffled in Johnny’s shirt. Another. Another. She hasn’t been hugged in five hundred years. He wraps his arms around her back, cupping one hand against the back of her head. Her hair is brittle under his palm, like how his always got after a long summer of surfing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, as the saltwater bleeds from her. “I’m here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stand there for a small eternity, Johnny making nonsense shushing sounds as she soaks his shirt in tears. She keeps moving like she wants to pull away, before shaking her head and curling impossibly closer against him. He thinks she might be leaving bruises in the shape of her fingers, and he mourns the fact that they’ll only last minutes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wants evidence that this is real.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the tears finally subside, she does pull back, although she keeps one hand locked firmly on his arm. This close, he can see how exhausted she really is, dark circles smudged like bruises under her eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t know how to fix five hundred years of death, five hundred years of pain and dark and loneliness. But the exhaustion weighing down every inch of her, the lack of flesh on her bones—these, at least, he has a cure for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You need some sleep,” he blurts. “And some food. And this isn’t a good place for either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looks at him warily, like she’s expecting him to—he doesn’t know, hand her a twenty and tell her to take care of herself out there? He bites down the hurt at that expectation. God knows she’s been through enough to earn the right to be wary.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And she’s seen the way you are with Robby.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come home with me,” he says, jerking his head at the door. “I’ll make dinner, give you a place to crash. And then we’ll...well, we’ll figure shit out once you get some sleep. Okay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” she whispers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She curls up in the passenger’s seat of his brand new, LaRusso-dealership-plated car (and no one better fucking pull him over right now because he does </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>wanna have to explain the shivering, wide-eyed, far-too-skinny woman to a cop. Not that the bastards would care enough about her to ask). Her eyes dart around as he puts the car in drive, skimming over the storefronts and streetlights like she’s trying to devour the world with her gaze.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s seen the world through him and Booker. But that still must be </span>
  <em>
    <span>vastly </span>
  </em>
  <span>fucking different than being a part of it herself. Fuck, </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>gets confused by 2018 sometimes, and he’s been alive for the years leading up to it. She went under in the dark ages. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He reaches out, palm upturned on the center console. If she were any other girl, it would be a move. Fingers close around his. Squeeze down tight. He rubs a thumb over the back of her hand, and doesn’t complain about how she’s cutting off his circulation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How’d you get here?” he asks her as they leave the parking lot. “Can’t see you gettin’ on a plane.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did,” she murmurs. She cranes her neck as they drive past an In-N-Out, drinking in the bright neon colors of the sign. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Want a burger?” he asks her. “Or—shit, you haven’t eaten anything in ages, I’m probably supposed to be giving you like, soup or some shit—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I might die from the sudden influx of protein,” she says matter-of-factly. “But I’ve tasted hundreds of burgers without being able to eat one. I’ve waited long enough.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He considered protesting, just for a moment. But fuck, he’s died for stupider reasons. Exhibit A: the billboard incident. Exhibit B: the Applebee’s incident. If the woman is willing to die for takeout, then die for takeout she shall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He orders three double-doubles, a shit ton of fries, and two large Cokes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait,” he says as she reaches for the bag. “If you’re gonna die, you’re doing it in a place with blinds that I can close.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She withdraws her hand, but there’s a wild animal hunger in her eyes. And...yeah, the whole car is filling up with the smell of greasy, cheesy meat, and the only food she’s eaten in five hundred years is whatever garbage she had on the airplane.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shoves one of the Cokes into her hands. Fuck it, it’s basically sugar water right?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Drink this,” he says. “We’re almost home. So. You took a plane?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mmm.” She takes a long sip before elaborating. “The...the coffin rusted through. I was able to kick myself out. Died a few times on the jagged edges, but eventually, I was free.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t look at him as she speaks, even as he takes his eyes off the road to glance at her. He should have slept. He should have seen this all for himself, so that she wouldn’t have to tell him about it like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t very far from shore, as it turns out,” she says. “It didn’t take very many deaths for me to crawl my way back to it. It makes sense. I don’t remember the ship sailing very far. Why would they waste their time executing a witch?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cup shakes in her hands. She rests it on the seat between her legs, squeezing it between her knobby knees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought...when I first sank, I thought that would make it easy for Andromache. I thought that she’d find me within weeks.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johnny swallows around the lump of iron in his throat. He remembers the agony in Andy’s voice, how she said she’d searched for months, years, decades. He wonders how many times she’d </span>
  <em>
    <span>just missed</span>
  </em>
  <span> Quynh. How quickly she could have found her if she just kept looking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And she didn’t,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And she didn’t,” Quynh echoes. She turns her face away, propping her head up on her hand as she stares out the passenger side window. “Until Booker joined us, I thought she just...hadn’t bothered. Or that they’d thrown her in the sea too. Or that the flames really had destroyed her for good. I wasn’t sure which of those options was the worst.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about what really happened?” he asks. “Where does that land on the scale of shittiness?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t say anything for a long time. Just stares at the passing lights like they’re the most interesting things she’s ever seen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She gave up on me,” she says. “She looked, and the looking hurt, and eventually it hurt too much, so she just stopped. They all stopped. Even Booker—he hurt too much when he saw what was happening to me, so he just...pretended I was a nightmare.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This hurts too. It hurts too much to listen to. He wants it to stop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He reaches a hand out, puts it on her shoulder, and doesn’t say a word. Because it hurts her more. This—this </span>
  <em>
    <span>awful </span>
  </em>
  <span>thing—has always hurt her more. He wishes that Andy and Joe and Nicky had seen that, back when they stopped looking so that they could survive the pain of not finding. He wishes that Booker had seen that, back when he decided to avoid Quynh in the light of day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s never had the option of minimizing the pain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What really happened is—it’s the worst possible option, Johnny. It’s the worst thing they could have done to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re home. He pulls up in front of the apartment complex and kills the engine. Silence blankets the car. He doesn’t try to break it, doesn’t try to make it more comfortable. He just waits for her lead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels like when his mother told him she had cancer. When Shannon told him she was pregnant. When Andy told him what was happening to him. Two people talk. Something breaks in one of them. Tale as old as time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” she sniffs at last, drawing a hand over her eyes. “I got to shore. Booker was in...France, I think. I don’t really care. But he found me quickly. He kept going on and on about how </span>
  <em>
    <span>wonderful </span>
  </em>
  <span>it was that I was finally free, that I could rejoin them, that we could all be a happy family again, and I—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She chokes on her own words, hands curling into fists in her lap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was so </span>
  <em>
    <span>angry. </span>
  </em>
  <span>I thought I might kill him, right there on the beach. But I didn’t. I just—I let him clean me, clothe me, feed me some tasteless nutrition drink. And then he tried to call Andy. I didn’t let him do that. I didn’t let him call any of them. I told him, when he got me looking like a person again, that he was bringing me to you, and then he was fucking off.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smiles a bit at that, despite himself. He can picture her, towering in her anger, commanding even as her legs wobble. There’s still fight in her. He can work with that. He never thought he’d be able to help someone like how he wants to help her, but he thinks...he thinks he might manage it okay.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She came to him for a reason. Out of everyone else, she came to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good thing he did,” he says. “For him, I mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She turns her face away from the window, and her eyes are red with tears, and she looks more tired than his mother did the day before she died. But she smiles back. It’s a sharp, brittle thing, nothing like that first glimpse of humor in the dojo. But it’s a smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go inside,” she says, reaching for the door handle. “I’m starving.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She eats her way through two burgers, most of the fries, and a pint of ice cream that’s been sitting forgotten in Johnny’s freezer for at least a month. Twenty minutes later, she collapses on the floor, clutching at her heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He uses the opportunity to snag the rest of the fries for himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was worth it,” she says when she comes back to life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Glad to hear it,” Johnny says, stuffing another handful of fries in his mouth. She glares at him and pulls herself to her feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to waste time cleaning,” she tells him, leaning against the counter. “That’s the only reason I’m not stabbing you right now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ll have plenty of time to kill me later,” he says. “Once you’re back up to a healthy weight, we’re gonna be fighting from dusk till dawn.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tilts her head to the side, considering him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want to fight me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to train you. Or no, train </span>
  <em>
    <span>with </span>
  </em>
  <span>you. Get you back into fighting shape.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She frowns, and he remembers what she said about Booker. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Rejoin the family.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not so that you can keep up with the others,” he says quickly. “Who gives a shit about them? Just—being able to fight, having that kind of power, that kind of strength. It always made everything awful in my life feel a bit less awful. Like I could punch my way through it, if nothing else.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sid sneering at his worthlessness, Kreese’s hand around his throat, a cancer ward, a wailing newborn, a bender gone horribly, horribly wrong. Fighting had got him through all of that, for better or worse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno if you’re like me, in that way,” he says. “Maybe it’s better if you’re not. But this is what I know to do. This is how I know to help. And I want to help you, Quynh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pushes herself away from the counter and crosses the length of Johnny’s small kitchen, stopping only inches from him. He can feel the heat from her skin, can see her shoulders heave from the effort of those few steps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have been,” she murmurs. “More than you know. That’s why I came to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She leans forward and wraps her arms around him again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” she says into his shoulder. Johnny closes his eyes, swallowing back tears. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he just did what they all should have been doing. He just acknowledged that she was alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t mention it,” he whispers, hugging her back.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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